The following relates generally to wireless communication, and more specifically to configuration aspects of a tracking reference signal in New Radio.
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include fourth generation (4G) systems such as a Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems or LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) systems, and fifth generation (5G) systems which may be referred to as New Radio (NR) systems. These systems may employ technologies such as code division multiple access (CDMA), time division multiple access (TDMA), frequency division multiple access (FDMA), orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), or discrete Fourier transform-spread-OFDM (DFT-S-OFDM). A wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations or network access nodes, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, which may be otherwise known as user equipment (UE).
Wireless communications systems seek to maintain time and frequency synchronization to permit communication between communication devices, including base stations and UEs. In LTE, a base station transmits a cell-specific reference signal in every slot and resource block, and a UE within range of the base station may perform time tracking, frequency tracking, or both, using a received cell-specific reference signal to maintain time and frequency synchronization with the base station. NR systems do not similarly transmit a cell-specific reference signal in every slot and resource block. Instead, a base station in NR systems may transmit a tracking reference signal that a UE may use for time tracking, frequency tracking, or both. Conventional tracking reference signal transmission techniques fail to adequately balance trade-offs between time tracking and frequency tracking, resulting in degraded time and frequency synchronization, lower channel throughput due to increased tracking reference signal overhead, or the like.